15 Jan, 2012
Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has sparked more than just outrage. With the House Judiciary Committee slated to continue debates on the bill when it returns from winter recess, the bill has already caused several of the biggest gaming studios to protest. Epic Games stated last week that it didn’t like it at all, with PR manager Dana Cowley saying on the official forums, “Epic Games supports efforts that would stop overseas websites profiting from pirating our games, but we have to do that in a way that’s compatible with freedom of speech and due process of law.
“Thus, we do not support the current version of SOPA.”
38 Studios has also come out with a similar statement. Chairman and Founder of the rising studio, Curt Schilling, said last week, “At 38 Studios, we are very strong supporters of copyright and trademark protection for creators of intellectual property. Having said that, we cannot in good conscience support the SOPA legislation as it’s currently written.
“We hope there are continued efforts to amend the legislation that will protect creators’ works, while also maintaining the freedom of openness the Internet provides people worldwide.”
Runic Games, the studio that brought us Torchlight, and Riot Games, the studio responsible for League of Legends, have also publicly voiced their disapproval of the controversial bill. Now Mojang and Red 5 Studios have tossed in their two cents as well. They’re not stopping at just saying something though.
Red 5 Studios’ CEO Mark Kern recently said in an interview with Shack News that the studio will be shutting down both the upcoming beta of their title Firefall and the website for one whole day, starting on January 18th. “Red 5 Studios is joining Reddit in protest of SOPA by going dark on January 18th,” said Kern. “We will be taking down our website, community site and Firefall beta for 24 hours on the 18th.
“This bill, and it’s sister bill, Protect IP, will shut down live streaming, shout casting, user generated content and have a chilling effect on game innovation and social media. Most of all, it hurts the smaller game companies, who will not have the legal resources or lobbying presence to protect themselves from unwarranted shutdown.”
“We are extremely disappointed in this misguided legislation,” Kern continued. “We are also ashamed of the ESA for supporting a bill which is clearly not the best interests of gamers or the game industry.”
Some major gaming studios still stand behind the legislation, but only by association with the ESA. While Epic, Riot, Runic, and a handful of other ESA-member studios have spoken out against the bill, they haven’t cancelled their membership. Not yet, anyway.
When asked if Red 5 supported the ESA in anyway, Kern said very pointedly, “No we are not, and now we never will be.”
They went so far as to cancel future E3 plans in protest. “I just had my staff cancel our E3 plans,” said Kern in an email after the interview, and added that the studio will not attend future E3 events unless the ESA reverses its stance on SOPA.
Red 5 isn’t the only one who’s pulling the big punches in this fight. Mojang, the incredibly successful and super-star studio of Minecraft, recently announced that Minecraft.net and Mojang.com will go offline on January 18th in protest. Studio head Markus Persson tweeted the announcement yesterday afternoon, saying that both websites will be “silently taken down” to protest SOPA.
Gamers that have downloaded a version of Minecraft may still play, but those who play on the browser-based version won’t be able to have access to it until Mojang decides to go back online.
For more information on SOPA, read the full text here.
Via Gamespot.
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